Antony Grey

In January 1978 Tom O’Carroll had been dismissed by the Open University, in June the News of the World had infiltrated PIE’s AGM and in August the Protection of Children Act had entered into force.

On 12 September 1978 the NCCL Gay Rights Committee got together at the NCCL offices for their regular monthly meeting.

Letters to NUPE re free speech. Alan [Deighton] had discussed this with Patricia Hewitt. This was further discussed under item below.

Article for Rights! on chemical castration. This was temporarily suspended, due to discussions about rumoured new home Office policy. Nettie meeting with MIND on this on Bill Pate case. It was doubted that exact Home Office policy would be stated (prison secrets etc…)

Protection of Children Bill. Bill [Forrester] was in touch with Hattie [Harman] about how this was to be monitored. David Offenbach agreed to monitor prosecutions under the Act, and relay information to Hattie. Attempts to have PIE proscribed, and to prosecute its publications were discussed.

3. Paedophilia

A memo on ‘Paedophilia’ from Patricia Hewitt was read out and noted (memo appended) [scroll down for the document and Nettie Pollard’s note to Antony Grey]

5. NUPE and Free Speech

In the light of the Memo on ‘Paedophilia’ it was agreed that Roland [Jeffrey] contact Patricia Hewitt and ask her to again approach NUPE for a more satisfactory response over their members apparent attempt to prevent a discussion of, inter alia, paedophilia. Roland to ask Patricia for progress report so far and to invite her to next GRC meeting.

11. Visit to Brynmor John

Roland report on joint NCCL/JCWI visit on non-national gay lovers. Pending the outcome of the appeals of the cases in question, John would consider using his ministerial discretion; no guidelines were given, though he indicated that ‘persecution’ in the country of origin of the non-national partner would impress him strongly as grounds for the exercise of discretion.

Patricia Hewitt’s Memo on Paedophilia to staff and members of the NCCL Gay Rights Sub-Committee during September 1978 attempted to re-focus the GCR’s almost exclusive scope on paeodophile civil liberties which left Nettie Pollard aghast. When forwarding the note to Antony Grey she prefers to construe Hewitt’s memo as a threat by NCCL to drop all issues relating to sexuality:

“Seriously Antony, this paper is really saying is that the powers in NCCL want NCCL to have nothing to do with the subject. For example, the thing to do with Tom O’C being thrown out of Swansea (you may remember seeing Patricia with Roland and me at the start of the year) – this has still got nowhere at all inspite of about six separate reminders from people on the Committee.

If were (sic) are not viligant NCCL will quietly drop all issues to do with sexuality.

Love Nettie”

Hewitt had not asked for all matters relating to paedophilia to be dropped. Cases where the ‘relationship’ involved a child of 14 or over (as submitted by NCCL to the Criminal Law Revision Committee), the NCCL Legal team or Gay Rights Committee may still appropriately become involved in.

“The EC [Executive Committee] agreed that paedophilia was not itself a civil liberties issue. In particular, it is not a gay rights issue and does not therefore fall within the scope of the gay rights committee.”

During the spring and summer of 1970 analysis of the responses to the Social Needs questionnaire was undertaken. A weekend residential conference entitled ‘Social Needs’ and sponsored by the Albany Trust and the Yorkshire Council of Social Service’s Raymond Clarke (a protege of Sir Keith Joseph) was scheduled to take place at York University in July 1970 to discuss the results of the survey and implications for future work and Grey was keen to have the results of the survey to present at the conference.

In January 1970 Antony Grey wrote to Peter Righton to ask for his help in analysing the ‘Social Needs’ questionnaire.

In the meantime Righton’s busy schedule meant that his Albany Trust nomination as one of the five volunteers to provide counselling at St Katherine’s gay group based in Limehouse (under the auspices of Bishop of Stepney, Father Trevor Huddleston and the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield) was causing problems due to his non-attendance, leaving others such as Rev Malcolm Johnson to cover gaps in the rota.

In 1974 Albany Trust was in the middle of moving offices. Since returning to the Trust in July 1971 (following Peter Righton and spooky Robert Chartham/Ronald Seth almost gaining control of the counselling files, especially Doreen Cordell’s work with various interested clergy into ritual/religious ceremonial abuse) Grey and the Trustees had relinquished the Piccadilly/Shaftesbury Avenue lease (at the end of 1972?) and become itinerant with Grey holding the fort at two different addresses in Highbury Grove and Kilburn until a permanent location in Clapham was found.

It soon became clear that the Trust must be placed on a firmer footing, or else wind up. Once again Raymond Clarke came to the rescue. Now head of the national organisations division of the National Council for Social Service, he approached Miss (later Dame) Geraldine M. Aves CBE who had recently retired as Chief Welfare Officer of the Ministry of Health, and she agreed to chair a small working party to examine the Trust’s future. Miss Aves was a formidable personage who was widely held in considerable awe – although she was never anything but extremely charming to me. She quickly perceived that the Trust was a pioneer in an increasingly visible field of unmet need. Largely thanks to her guiding hand and influence a three year development grant, initially of £10,000 a year, was obtained from the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office late in 1973 [sic – date must have been 1974 see below], conditional upon the Trust giving an undertaking ‘that these public funds will not be used to exert pressure on the Government for any change in the law on homosexuality.’

I was sitting along in the small house in Highbury which was the trust’s temporary home when I received the anxiously awaited phone call telling me that our application had been successful. My feeling of relief was profound.” [Loc 3608/6001 Grey’s Quest for Justice: Towards Homosexual Emancipation]

In 1969 Raymond Clarke had organised the Social Study Project with Peter Righton, Ian Greer, Rev. Michael Butler and Antony Grey [ see further blog post here ] and in 1970 organised the Social Needs Conference at York University. £10,000 in 1974/1975 would be worth approx. £93,000 in today’s money so this was a very substantial cash injection from the Home Office to the Trust and as will become clear, the Trust was to have virtually no office overheads at this time due to a generous offer.

In December 1974, partially due to not having fixed offices but also because Albany Trustee Lil Butler, aged 33, was heavily pregnant with twins (who would arrive on 29 December her fifth and sixth children in 15 years of marriage to Samuel Butler, Lord Butler’s son) the Albany Trust met at her house at 11 St Alban’s Grove, off of Kensington High Street. In July Lucilla had hosted a networking/fundraising event for Albany Trust as mentioned in the minutes. Sadly, shortly after the twins’ birth on 6 January 1975 both of Lucilla Butler’s parents would die in a motor accident in a gale. The Edith Borthwick school in Essex near Braintree is named for her mother.

Six Albany Trustees were in attendance: Rev. Michael Butler, Antony Grey, Dr John Robinson (former Bishop of Woolwich, currently then Dean of Trinity College Cambridge with Lucilla’s father-in-law Lord Butler as Master), Dr Charlotte Wolff along with David Barnard (formerly of the NCCL) who at the meeting was officially appointed Organising Secretary to the Trust.

Following abandoning the lease on 32 Shaftesbury Avenue at Piccadilly (over which there was dispute) the Trust being itinerant had held sporadic meetings during the period 1973-1974, first in Kilburn and then in Highbury at 18 Corsica Street, N5 – opposite Dr Rhodes Boyson’s school Highbury Grove he’d founded in 1967, where he’d implemented a caning policy, leaving in 1974 to become a Conservative MP and later an Education Minister under Thatcher.

David Barnard reported some good news regarding permanent premises being offered to the Trust for 2 years virtually free of charge which they were scheduled to move to from March 1975:

“David Barnard reported that the Trust had generously been offered offices by Miss Betty Shortt of Henri Dorot Ltd at their premises at 31/33 Clapham Road, London SW9. The offices comprised nine rooms and a warehouse on three floors, all of which had been recently carpeted, decorated, rewired, centrally heated, etc. The proposal was that the Trust occupied the offices on Licence for a period of two years, during which the Trust would have no liability for rent or rates, but would pay a proportion of the cost of lighting, heating and office cleaning. The Trustees’ expressed their appreciation of Miss Shortt’s offer and confirmed its acceptance by the Managing Trustee.”

The nine offices would allow for Albany Trust to step up the counselling services offered to sexual minorities. The use to which the warehouse space could be put would shortly become the subject of discussions between Albany Trust and PIE/ Nucleus’s Charles Napier as providing a Youth Centre for young homosexuals although ultimately it was thought Earl’s Court would be a better location.

Youth Service Provision for Young Homosexuals in Earl’s Court, Submission of Evidence & Proposals – A Working Party instigated by Sir Harold Haywood OBE, Final paragraphs of Appendix IV ‘The Earl’s Court Gay Help Service by Nucleus’

Grey also had good news and announced ‘successful negotiations’ with Tony Hart of the Home Office Voluntary Services Unit at the meeting at Lucilla Butler’s house in December 1974

Home Office Grant

“Antony Grey reported on his successful negotiations with Tony Hart at the Voluntary Services Unit of the Home Office. The letter from Mr Hart offering a grant to the Trust had already been circulated. The Trustees noted with appreciation the grant received, and the help given in this matter by Miss Geraldine Aves and her colleagues of the ad hoc Advisory Group. The Trustees’ agreed that a letter of thanks should be sent to Miss Aves.”

Harold Wilson had just been re-elected with a majority of 3 (10.10.74) and 22nd October 1974 when Tony Hart wrote his letter above to Antony Grey was when the House first re-assembled after the election. The Home Secretary at the time was Roy Jenkins ( who had been in the post since March 74)

Tony Hart wrote:

“I am writing in reply to the application for a grant which you sent us on 18 July. I am sorry I have not been able to let you have a decision on this before now, but as I think you know we have had to consult a number of interested Departments.

I am glad to be able to tell you that the Minister of State, Lord Harris, has agreed that we should make a grant to the Albany trust of £10,000 for this financial year. We would be willing to consider a figure of a similar order in 1975/76, subject to further discussion next March and to Parliament agreeing the necessary funds. The grant is a contribution towards the administrative costs of your Headquarters as set out in your application and so far as possible the expenditure should be allocated in the manner you proposed. We should wish to be consulted on any significant variation in the proposed expenditure or the purposes to which the funds will be allocated. The grant is offered on the understanding that the Trust will give an undertaking that these public funds will not be used to exert pressure on the Government for any change in the Law on homosexuality.

The grant for this financial year will be paid in two instalments, the first at once and the second in January 1975. I should be grateful if you could let us have regular reports at six monthly intervals on the progress of the work. We should also like to see an audited account of the expenduture within four months of the end of each financial year, ie 31 March. Any balance of the grant unpsent at the end of each year must be returned. Could you please let me know as soon as possible to whom the cheques should be made payable.

I should be grateful if you could confirm that these arrangements and conditions are acceptable to your Trustees.”

On the small working party drafting the Albany Trust’s 3 year development programme the Home Office were being asked to fund sat David Jones O.B.E. at the National Institute of Social Work (who had previously been Peter Righton’s boss until Righton had moved to the National Children’s Bureau in 1972) and Raymond Clarke. Clarke, a Methodist and later a member of the United Reformed Church had started his social services career by studying at Nottingham University during the 1950s having left the Indian Army. He’d gone on to become Warden of University Settlement in Liverpool between 1957 – 1963 before moving to Yorkshire, (where Sir Keith Joseph had been MP in Leeds North East – Jimmy Savile’s constituency – since 1956) where he was appointed as Secretary of the Yorkshire Council of Social Service, becoming Joseph’s Social Services protege.

Grey, Quest for Justice, p.158

The recent report by the Methodists, especially concerning the prevalence of abuse in Nottingham and Derby, is food for thought due to two prominent individuals whose unstinting support for the Albany Trust’s support of PIE.

Before retiring to Cyprus Tony was the Headmaster of Cranleigh School in Surrey. In his university days he was President of the Oxford University Union. Thereafter he pursued a career in the Civil Service where he became a Principal in the Ministry of Transport. Later he was the Transport Adviser to the Malawi Government and then ran HM Government’s Voluntary Services Unit. In 1978 he was an Assistant Secretary in the Civil Service Department for controlling annual expenditure on public service pensions. On moving to the Treasury he was offered promotion to Under Secretary to the Cabinet Office.

With such a varied experience of government and administration Tony’s address on how his Residents’ Association liaise with the Pissouri Mukhtar and the Pissouri council was of great interest. He told Shipmates how the Association was set up, how they found Club premises and how cross cultural issues were handled. Bingo seems to be a good vehicle for meeting on common ground!

After his presentation a question time led to a good discussion of issues common to all ex-pats and hopefully an increased understanding of our host country.

Julian Gibbs – ‘A leading insurance broker of the time’ had hosted a fundraising/networking event for the Trust on 22 october 1974

A Head of My TimeBy George Stephen

Julian Gibbs, in his mid-forties had recently struck out on his own setting up Julian Gibbs Associates Ltd at 9 Manchester Square, breaking away from the family merchant bank Antony Gibbs which would later be subsumed into HSBC. He’d been on the livery of the Grocer’s Company since 1961 (aged 29) (shortly to offer the Albany Trust a grant for their Field Officer/Youth Officer), becoming Vice-Chairman of the London Federation of Boys Clubs in 1971 (aged 39) and the Vice-President of the Insurance Institute of London in 1972 (although name is missing from the IIL website). On 22 October 1974 Gibbs had hosted a fundraising and networking evening for Albany Trust, attended by Rev. Michael Butler, David Barnard and Antony Grey.

Future Chairman and Additional Trustees: It was agreed that a new Chairman for the Trustees should not be sought for the time being. It was agreed that it was desirable to have additional Trustees and that the following be invited in due course to become Trustees: –

In May 1975 David Barnard (Organising Secretary – Albany Trust) and Antony Grey (Managing Trustee – Albany Trust) were corresponding with Sidney Bunt the Training Officer of the National Association of Youth Clubs. Since autumn 1974 the National Association of Youth Clubs had been working with the Albany Trust to set up a 2 day training conference on youth sexuality for people who train youth workers, ‘multipliers’ to cascade the training.

Rev Michael Butler, the Trust’s Counselling Trustee (and to whom Robin Bryans had reported Father Colin Gill’s abuse of boys) would be relying on Sidney Bunt to arrange his overnight accommodation for the conference being held at NAYC’s offices on 30 Devonshire Street on Wednesday 28 and Thursday 29 May

Harold Haywood OBE (ex-Director of the National Association of Youth Clubs) and Tony Smythe (Director of MIND)

Ex-HBOS Chairman chairs NAYC

The Chairman of NAYC at the time was Dennis Stevenson was later to become Baron Stevenson of Coddenham of Suffolk, HBOS chairman for 7 years, raised to the House of Lords by Tony Blair in 1999, but at the time was recently married and just started a new job. His credential for chairmanship of NAYC stemmed from having conducted research reports into youth clubs and pop festivals at the Prime Minister Ted Heath’s request.

These included chairmanship of the National Association of Youth Clubs (where he met his great friend, Peter Mandelson) and being asked by Ted Heath, then Prime Minister, to head a study into pop festivals.

His day job had been since 1971 as Head of Newton Aycliffe and Peterlee New Town Development Corporation (NPDC). By 1977 Stevenson had chaired two HMSO reports for Department of Education:

New Age Travelers: Vanloads of Uproarious Humanity By Kevin Hetherington

Sir Harold Haywood, Savile, NAYC & PHAB

Sir Harold Haywood’s involvement with NAYC is listed as having ended in 1974 although its not yet clear as to why, and in February 1975 it was announced he and 3 other new trustees were joining the Albany Trust. Before joining the Albany Trust he had already become Director of the Education Interchange Council involved in facilitating foreign exchanges for educational purposes.

Six months after joining as a trustee, in September 1975 Haywood will take on the Chair of Trustees role at Albany Trust, meet with a number of Paedophile Information Exchange committee members including Peter Righton and lead the way in writing to the Guardian to ask of child prostitution rife at Playland’s Piccadilly Circus and Charles Hornby’s involvement, ‘Who was exploiting whom?’ It is during Haywood’s 30 months with the Albany Trust that they team up with the Paedophile Information Exchange to co-draft a Q&A booklet on Understanding Paedophilia which asserts child abusers are a social benefit without whom voluntary services and youth welfare work would be practically impossible – essentially pedophiles as a ‘free’ source of labour for social services – but at what price?

However, Haywood as Chair of the Trustees was not Antony Grey’s first choice. In autumn 1974, just as PIE was setting up, Grey was casting around for a high profile Chair to further the Trust’s ‘respectable’ image.

He chose to ask Sir Peter Morrison’s sister-in-law – Sara Morrison – wife of Devizes MP Sir Charles Morrison, who was still in position as Vice-Chair of the Conservative party and Sir Peter was preparing to back Thatcher in February’s Tory Leadership election. Sir Peter had only joined the House of Commons in February 1974.

Despite Haywood’s departure, with his London flat at 22 Park Crescent round the corner from Devonshire House NAYC HQ Savile stopping by was still a frequent occurrence and he maintained close links with both NAYC and PHAB beyond Haywood’s tenure. During 1974 and 1975 Savile was holding annual fundraising events ‘Tea-rific’ for NAYC and while writing his autobiography (published in 1974) referred to himself as Vice-President to Angus Ogilvy’s President. In 1974 Savile had also become Honorary President of PHAB when it became an independent charity.

Savile ran many marathons for PHAB, including the half marathon round Hyde Park, undertaking PHAB sponsored walks in Jersey and Northern Ireland. During Haywood’s time in 1970 PHAB had launched a TV fundraising appeal with Cliff Richard fronting the advert. Cliff along with Savile, Rolf Harris and Ed ‘Stewpot’ Stewart were to become four major entertainers appearing publicly for PHAB fundraising.

Robin Ince’s Bad Book Club, by Robin Ince (published 2010)

Did Savile have access and opportunity to abuse vulnerable children and teenagers (some of whom had physical disabilities) at NAYC and PHAB Discos? Will these two charitable organisations be able to safeguard children against abuse by celebrities or public figures in future if they haven’t already reported on how Jimmy Savile or Rolf Harris came to be involved in their fundraising, invited into positions of authority by whom?

In 1971 Savile had started the Dymomania treasure Trail fundraising event at the Post Office Tower and on 15 July 1973 hosted a PHAB BBC Radio 1 Speakeasy. With the Earl of Snowdon as Patron of PHAB and the Queen Mother as Patron of NAYC Savile had increased access for networking with royalty.

21 October, 1981. The Times. ‘Reception.’ ‘The Earl of Snowdon, Patron of PHAB (physically handicapped and able bodied) and Mr Jimmy Savile (president) were hosts at a reception and dinner held at the Mount Royal Hotel yesterday to launch the charity’s silver jubilee celebration for 1982. Among the guests were: Mr Hugh Rossi, Minister of state for Social Security and the Disabled […].’

Savile and the PHAB Russian Princess

Mecca Security employed retired ex-Met and City police officers. Alan Francis, a retired City police officer who went to work for Mecca Leisure as Head of Security (1978 – 1991) published the following in a police publication

“After retiring from the beloved City I went to work for Mecca Leisure, on the edge of show-business, where I met JS several times. At the Cafe de Paris , Coventry Street, the manageress Avril Matthews McClay, a singer, had been through a traumatic experience when her husband and child had been killed in a plane crash and she had been nursed by JS in Stoke Mandeville Hospital. At the Cafe de Paris there was a charity evening for the disabled. The Royal Marines turned up in uniform to carry the disabled inside and Jimmy Saville arrived with a Russian Princess. Paul Daniels also later arrived in support of Avril to give a free show of magic which was amazing. A lot of money was raised for the disabled-related charity PHAB (Physically Handicapped Able Bodies).”

The Russian Princess, Princess Jean Galitzine, was recently honoured in 2012 for her services to PHAB, a former 1950s Dior model who had married Prince George Galtizine, a major in the Welsh Guards

“After the Bolshevik revolution, Katya’s grandfather, Prince Vladimir Galitzine, fled his Russian homeland to become an antiques dealer in Paris. His extrovert son, Emmanuel, was a Spitfire pilot during the war and held the record for the RAF’s highest altitude combat with the Luftwaffe. Katya’s father, Prince George Galitzine, was a major in the Welsh Guards, while her mother was the Dior model Jean Dawnay.”

John D Stamford, self-styled Leader of the 1960s British Homophile community and beyond is not best pleased with Lord Beaumont’s reply requiring him to fill out an application form and doesn’t reply for over a month, although he remains Lord B’s ‘obedient servant’ if somewhat disgruntled when he does reply:

“I am returning your application form as the details required were given in my previous letter, and a person in my position should not be asked to fill in an application which one fills in for a post as a junior clerk. I did say in my original letter that no form of salary would be required by me, should this offer still stand, and should you still wish to interview me.”

Church Times, Friday 27 November 1970, p2

Church Times Friday 18 December 1970, p12

Church Times, 24 December 1970

Church Times 8 January 1971

The Albany Trust has by this point employed Michael De La Noy as Director and Lord Beaumont replies to inform Stamford of this, although he hopes that Michael and the Trust “will be able to take advantage of your kind offer” presumably in monetary terms.

However by the time Lord Beaumont (Tim to Michael seeing as Michael was formerly his assistant editing Prism from 1965, a radical church publication and they are well known to one another) writes an informal memo to De La Noy on 7th December stating,

“Antony says that this man is bad news, but if you look at his original application he appears to be swimming in money and therefore I suggest it may be well worth your while getting in contact with him fairly soon,”

Michael has already seized the initiative and

(1) been for a ‘delightful dinner’ with Stamford and his Spartacus colleagues the Tuesday before and the very next day writes a letter to Stamford thanking him and applying for membership of the new Mayfair Film Cinema Club which Stamford and others will be opening on 17th December. De La Noy also invites Stamford to an Albany Trust fundraiser at the crypt of St Martins in the Fields to be held on 22 January, telling Stamford

“I very much appreciate your concern about the Albany Trust and your obvious desire to help me. I do hope we shall find many ways of working closely together.”

(2) Met up with Roger Baker on Friday 4 December, a Spartacus journalist, in Shepherd’s Bush for a ‘programme that went quite well’ and arranged to be interviewed by him on the work of the Albany Trust for Spartacus

The Open University in the Press Office had taken advice from a barrister over their decision to sack Tom O’Carroll. The NCCL Gay Rights Committee meets and discuss what help and support they can offer.

“Complete support of GRC was unanimously offered through the Chair. Tom O’Carrol pointed out that already a great amount of representation had been made by many organisations. He thanked the GRC, and asked that he could keep the offer in mind, but allowed the position to be resolved by the other organisations if possible, still being able to return to the GRC for help if it became necessary.” Nikki Henriques was the chair for that meeting.

A month earlier news had reached the House of Commons that Tom O’Carroll had been sacked, mentioned in the second reading of the Child Protection Bill on 10th February:

House of Commons, second reading of the Child Protection Bill 10th February 1978

“The Bill was available for perusal and also discussion. After much deliberation, it was decided that the matter was important enough to call another meeting, especially to deal with this Bill. A letter from David Offenbach, who as a lawyer saw many faults in the Bill was read out. John Saunders mentioned that he had information of persons recently having action taken against them under the existing laws in connection with Child Pornography cases. These cases seemed to be being dealt with quite adequately. It did seem the Bill was a panic measure. Although the committee agreed that children needed protection, this Bill would in fact put children at greater risk, also innocent people. It would bring the ruthless child exploiter to the fore.

To prevent a situation arising that would give ‘The Powers that be’ an open ended Bill, allowing limitless power, invasion of privacy, and maybe even causing Educational material to be at risk, also putting the children at GREATER risk, it was decided that the GRC should discuss the Bill at length, and make representation to NCCL to request that the Bill be reconsidered, and at least dealt with in a proper [??], not in panic, and not as a political manoeuvre to give certain Members of Parliament the chance to use the Bill for other reasons than that which it was reputed to be designed for.”

NCCL Gay Rights Committee schedule a special meeting for the Wednesday 15th March to peruse and discuss the Child Protection Bill at more length with Bill Forrester coordinating.

April 1978: ‘That Booklet’ is published & Antony Grey re-joins NCCL

‘That Booklet’ referred to below in Magpie April 1978, was Paedophilia: Some Questions & Answers [see further blog post: Who was ‘John’ the Albany Trust representative on the PIE co-drafting committee?]. Despite apparently not having collected enough money from the membership [only 31 members donated £156 in total – £847.16 in today’s money] to go to print, PIE’s Executive Committee decided to fund the balance themselves. Perhaps going cap in hand to the Albany Society Ltd (the Trust’s grant-giving arm) was out of the question, although its unclear as to whether Antony Grey also resigned from the Society when he resigned from the Trust in mid-1977, instead taking up an Executive Committee position at the NCCL at Nettie Pollard’s invitation on 3rd April 1978 [see further blog post: Antony Grey meets and corresponds with Parker Rossman]. Those who had donated to the fundraising were able to receive ‘complimentary’ copies, others would have to pay 35 pence [£1.90]

Magpie No 10, April 1978

Magpie No 10, April 1978

Magpie No 11, May 1978

“All members of the House of Commons and some Lords have been sent a copy of PIE’s new booklet Paedophilia – Some Questions and Answers. This distribution was timed to coincide with a Press Release announcing the publication of the booklet. 180 newspapers and periodicals in the UK received this Press Release.”

It would be interesting to know if the ‘some Lords’ selected by PIE to receive a complimentary copy of ‘That Booklet’ overlapped much, if at all, with the list of ’18 Members of the Upper House’ Harriet Harman is all set to follow up with to lobby for the NCCL proposed amendments to the Bill [see below]. Why did Harriet Harman or the NCCL GCR think the 18 would be amenable to NCCL’s proposed amendments? How had they been identified by the NCCL? The ‘regrettable’ situation was that, while the Chairman of PIE Tom O’Carroll and PIE member Nettie Pollard were steering hard on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee, PIE’s proposed amendments to the Protection of Children Bill didn’t need to be lobbied for under PIE’s name. By pushing on with publishing ‘that booklet’ (much unchanged from the final draft presented to the Albany Trust in March 1977 although NCCL and Albany Trust addresses had been removed) at the right time, PIE was able to support the NCCL’s lobbying more effectively and, on the surface, separately. Antony Grey’s return to the NCCL Executive Committee at Nettie Pollard’s invitation the day after his attendance at the NCCL AGM was particularly helpful.

May 1978: NCCL GCR Child Protection Bill lobbying in the House of Lords

By May the Child Protection Bill is being debated in the House of Lords.

Antony Grey wasn’t able to attend (being the first meeting after re-joining NCCL Executive Committee having attended the NCCL AGM and seeing Tom O’Carroll there) although he is tasked with an action in his absence – to follow up whether NUPE’s Assistant had replied to Patricia Hewitt’s approach re Tom O’Carroll’s appearances at Swansea’s Love & Attraction Conference

“Bill now due for Committee of the Whole House in the Lords on Thursday 18th May. Hattie Harman’s briefing had gone to 18 Members of the Upper House, and she would be in touch with interested Lords before 18th. Nettie and Roland had met Hattie, and it was decided to arrange for two additional amendments,

one to redefine concept of ‘production’ as used in the Bill and

the other to exclude sex education material from its ambit

especially since the amendment redefining Indecency as set out in the Bill was likely to fail.

Hattie was arranging for members of the EC Sub-Committee set up to put amendment proposals to be at House on 18th if possible, and Nettie and Roland would also be available if required.”

Who served on the NCCL Executive Committee Sub-Committee that were attending the House of Lords prior to the debate as to be arranged via Harriet Harman?

18 Lords approached for 18th May Debate on Child Protection Bill

The House of Lords debate started at 6pm that Thursday evening of 18th May and ran until shortly after 7.45pm

Baroness Faithfull does not have much faith in Lord Beaumont of Whitley’s proposed Amendment to Lord Harris, Minister for Home Office’s Amendment. Neither does Lord Somers have much time for Lord Widoger’s suggestions.

“I am most grateful for the way in which the Committee has received and discussed this Amendment, and I freely admit that there are major flaws in it. The point about material from abroad, I entirely accept; the point about the effects on the child of the matter having to be tested in court, I grant to be an overwhelming reason against the Amendment as it is drafted. I entirely accept the point made by the noble Lord who spoke from the Benches opposite about the effect on the child, not only of the making of the film but also of the showing and the publishing of it, and it is an absolutely worthy part of the Bill that it is trying to stop that harm.

Nevertheless, I still have my doubts in two areas. One of them is in what I might call “the David Hamilton syndrome”, which the noble Lord, Lord Northfield, raised. I am still not at all clear what the situation would be there, for, as I say, there is no doubt that in the products of a number of respectable artists and respectable photographers there is a sensuality which a great many people, particularly those who repress their own sexuality, find intensely disturbing—not disgusting or depraved but disturbing. I do not know whether the products of such people, such professional photographers, are covered by 570 this Bill. Nor, I suspect, does anyone else. I think this is a very bad situation. It could he decided only by a jury. We could only make an intelligent guess as to what a jury would decide. I do not know in these circumstances what juries would decide. But I think we ought to be fairly clear in our own minds as to what we are actually saying and doing and whether some of these cases come within the ambit or not. This is quite apart from the peculiar anomaly that, for instance, some of Graham Ovenden’s paintings could not possibly be subject to prosecution under this Bill because they are paintings; but if someone photographed them, they could be. That seems a weird situation to find ourselves in, and one which is difficult to deal with.“

“The second aspect with which the Amendment tries to deal is the area of artists—painting, depicting or photographing—and there is no real borderline here, as we all now know in the realms of art, but it is quite obvious in this case. Pubescent or pre-pubescent children are, in a way which they think, right for their art without doing the children much harm, it would seem to me. There are today in this country in a great many shops which sell postcard—I refer to the respectable ones and the highly respectable ones as well as the others—photographs by David Hamilton. As noble Lords no doubt know, David Hamiltion is a very well-known photographer of young girls, probably many of whom fall into the category of 14 to 16 about whom we are particularly talking. No obscenity of any kind comes into it, but that there is a real sensuality, a real eroticism, nobody can possibly doubt; nor, frankly, can their sales be ascribed to anything else.

§There are other artists who I will not name but who are dealing with the same situation, and I will take two examples from the past because the Victorian age, and the most respectable parts of that age, were absolutely rampant with this awareness of the sexuality and eroticism of children. If one looks at photographs by Lewis Carroll, the Reverend Charles Dodgson, of small girls, whom he preferred photographing naked, there can be absolutely no doubt whatever that, whether or not he realised it, they were strongly erotic actions. There is no evidence, so far as I know, that it ever did any of the children any harm, although one or two mammas got alarmed and suggested that the children were getting a little old for that, but that was all right because, when they got too old for that, Lewis Carroll thought they had got too old for that, too. Then Henry Tuke, a noted RA, who painted and exhibited in the Royal Academy every year; he painted naked boys bathing in practically every one of his pictures, and again they contain a strong eroticism.”

Antony Grey and Roland Jeffery had together met with Patricia Hewitt (General Secretary of NCCL for the past 3.5 years) to ask her to contact the NUPE regarding action against venues where Tom O’Carroll had been invited to speak at (Oxford and Liverpool Student Unions) and at the September 1977 Swansea Love & Attraction Conference. Hewitt had obliged, writing to the NUPE Assistant General Secretary but no reply had been received.

Magpie No 10 March 1978

Magpie No 11, April 1978

The April AGM of NCCL had passed Bill Forrester and Nettie Pollard’s motion to condemn attacks on PIE’s freedom of expression – but not without a telling amendment suggesting PIE’s influence at NCCL AGMs was finding some resistance:

“Accordingly, whilst reaffirming the NCCL policy on the age of consent and the right of children; particularly the need to protect those of prepubertal age…”

NCCL 1978 AGM & Ballot Booklet

Roland Jeffery, who approached Patricia Hewitt with Grey on NUPE, had been working with Harold Haywood OBE, Lucilla Butler and PIE treasurer Charles Napier in the group Haywood assembled at Earl’s Court, during the time Napier had been asked to go on holiday when revealed as PIE Treasurer mid-1977. Jeffrey had also been the CHE group convenor at Oxford University according to his ballot biography below standing for election at April 1978 NCCL AGM for the Executive Committee as proposed by Geoffrey Robertson and seconded by Nettie Pollard.

Tom O’Carroll had written to Antony Grey 3 weeks prior to the NCCL meeting minuted here (10 May 1978) to thank him “in relation to NUPE etc.”

The committee was informed of a number of raids which have taken place in the last few days with warrants issued under the Obscene Publications Act. It was thought that this was a cover for access to gain information on PIE and its membership files.”

“Patricia was most unwilling to accept Tom O’Carroll’s report for inclusion in the conference report because it might further the less informed public’s identification of gays with child molesters (though we fully accept that pedophiles are not necessarily child molesters either). It was decided to refer this matter to the full Executive who would be circulated in advance. The consensus of the committee was a demand for its inclusion with a suitable introduction.”

NCCL GCR 13 June 1978

Unfortunately Magpie Issue no 11 of April 1978 had already gone to print so had announced that he article would be included. Tom O’Carroll had given a speech on Chemical Castration at a conference NCCL had convened in May 1977 on Gay Rights. Will be interesting to see if Patricia Hewitt’s view was overruled by the Executive Committee after considering the matter of a ‘suitable introduction’ and whether the article was eventually published in the NCCL’s 1977/78 AGM Conference Report or the Booklet produced for the Gay Rights Conference?

In the months before the 3rd May 1979 General Election when Thatcher swept to power ousting Callaghan’s Labour government, and the 3 year DES grant for the Albany Trust’s ‘Experimental Project’ on ‘Youth and Sexuality’ was coming to an end, Antony Grey was in correspondence with a civil servant employee of the Department of Education & Science concerning ‘health education’ and concerns over the future of governmental policy in this area. It was a concern that would be well-founded, judging by the DES cool response to the Albany Trust’s Youth Worker report on the experiment in January 1980.

On 22 February 1979, John Alexander, writes to Antony Grey on departmental notepaper:

“I greatly enjoyed our time together on 22 February and only regret that, by the nature of things, it was not possible or expedient with all of us present to deal, in greater detail, with central government implications on the topic of our discussion. As you may have realised I am on sabbatical leave until the end of March and so I was in no way expressing the view of DES. “

John wishes to return the invitation of lunch to Antony in order to discuss Grey’s recent article published in the New Humanist [which Grey publishes in Speaking Law Sex & Politics here ] which championed the work of several of Albany Trust’s trustees such as Quaker QC Keith Wedmore’s 1963 Towards a Quaker View of Sex and the Anglican ‘South Bank’ theologians such as Dr John Robertson (Bishop of Woolwich), Bishop of Southwark (Mervyn Stockwood) and Canon Eric James (later HM Chaplain to the Queen – here in 1971 promising patronage to Peter Righton along with the Bishop of Stepney )

“I assume you had read my article in New Society (written under a pseudonym because of my civil servant status) which, though drastically cut when it comes to refer to health education aspects, nevertheless attempts to draw attention to the plight of the younger males.

I am convinced that, in spite of continued opposition and obstruction – and inactivity – we can achieve much by merely keeping-up the battle.”

New Society, 29 June 1979, Robert Spittal (nom de paedophile plume of HMI )

Grey hasn’t archived his reply of 27 February 1979, but John Alexander responds enthusiastically suggesting dates to meet in April despite his time being less free now he has resumed his inspectorial duties – as an inspector for the DES is he inspecting schools in the days before Ofsted or inspecting other institutions falling under the remit of DES?

John will try and tie in a meeting at DES in the afternoon on the day Antony is available to meet him for lunch in Central London “thus making an effective working day”.

“Nevertheless I consider our discussions of importance in the field of Health Education and would wish to keep in touch with your thinking as well as with associated developments e.g. the film.”

and encloses his article on runaway boys or ‘Johnny Go Homes’ (as he calls them) and their habit of leaving comfortable, well-provided lives in the country to travel to London where some of them act as decoys to lure unsuspecting older men into being robbed down dark alleyways.

John protests that despite the ‘eye-catcher opener’ dwelling on the details of boy and young male prostitution at Piccadilly Circus, New Society had cut the rest of the article which went on to consider the kind of measures and research in health education to address ‘Johnny Go Homes’.

30 March 1979

“In the event it is only the first part with a tiny reference to possible action which was published. It did, at any rate, lead to some interesting correspondence and enable me to use these leads as a lever to force some HMI/DES thinking about the subject. Unfortunately everyone seems pleasantly interested but determined to take no action or even further discussion.”

6 April 1979

“There seems to have been a stunning silence since we met the film team and the others but I am horrified at the electioneering in Bournemouth by one of the candidates in strong opposition to CHE etc. Of course a geriatric area like this is more likely to foster these narrow views e.g. last week’s outburst in the council about male gays at Shell Bay and seeking to allow only female nudes on that reserved beach!”

At Shell Bay you could watch the ferries departing from Poole Harbour on their way to Jersey ‘s St Helier or Cherbourg in France, winding their way past Brownsea Island, the home of Baden-Powell’s first youth experiment of his own in establishing a Scout Camp on 1 -8 August 1907 to test his ideas he was developing for his book Scouting for Boys http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brownsea_Island_Scout_camp

In 1979 the MP for Bournemouth East for the past 2 years had been Conservative David Atkinson MP (who was to hold the constituency successfully for 28 years from 1977 – 2005).

“Mr Atkinson, 37, an illustrator, decided to speak out after becoming increasingly concerned about his father’s behaviour and his wider circle of acquaintances. David Atkinson was MP for Bournemouth East for almost 28 years before stepping down in 2005.”

“His son has compiled a dossier of his own on his father. In it he writes: “In the research work that I have done… it is clear that my father was associated with some very dangerous people.””

“Other suspicions, which fuel Mr Atkinson’s concerns about his father, cannot be repeated in The Telegraph for legal reasons. There is nothing in the evidence so far gathered by Mr Atkinson that offers any clear proof that his father had had sex with under-age children.”

“But I think my father got mixed up with the wrong people. I think he didn’t want anybody to find out he was gay and used that to influence him. He liked young men.”

“He said his father kept ‘meticulous’ notes of his every day activities in House of commons pocket diaries. Mr Atkinson does not have access to his father’s diaries.”

Part of the same scene were London dinners sponsored by Unita. One MP guest-list included such figures as Robert Atkins, now minister for the environment and countryside, John Carlile, Mr Colvin and David Atkinson, who led an SNI delegation to observe the Angolan peace process in 1992, a year before the firm closed.

In 1978, during the passage of the Protection of Children bill through Parliament, and just as PIE were preparing to publish their Paedophilia: Some Questions & Answers and distribute the booklet to MPs pigeonholes in the House of Commons, Tom O’Carroll, Chairman of Paedophile Information Exchange and member of the NCCL Gay Rights Committee wrote to Antony Grey in his role on the Executive Committee of the Defence of Literature and Arts Society (‘DLAS’).

O’Carroll wanted to thank Grey for his support at the 1978 NCCL Annual General Meeting and “in relation to” the National Union for Public Employees. The NCCL AGM had taken place on 1-2 April at City University, a fortnight prior to O’Carroll’s letter.

“Dear Antony, I was pleased to see you the other day, and only regret that I had to dash off without having a chance to talk to you after the meeting. Allow me, however, to thank you very much for your support at the NCCL AGM, and in relation to NUPE etc.”

At the 1978 AGM which O’Carroll and Grey had attended, PIE member Nettie Pollard had seconded a motion proposed by Bill Forrester to ask NCCL to condemn the protests against PIE’s meeting in September 1977:

“This AGM re-affirms the right of free discussion and freedom to hold meetings for all organisations and individuals doing so within the law.

In particular this AGM condemns the physical and other attacks on those who have discussed or attempted to discuss paedophilia and re-affirms NCCL’s condemnation of harassment and unlawful attacks on such persons.” [Bill Forrester and Nettie Pollard]

Tom O’Carroll was responding to an approach made by DLAS to David Grove, PIE’s Children Rights’ Campaign leader and keeper of the PIE mailing list.

In June/July 1976 edition of Understanding Paedophilia (PIE’s forerunner to Magpie) the ‘Magnificent Six’ had been announced, with the following people undertaking the following roles for PIE

‘It’s the Magnificent Six’, p. 7
New EC:Keith Hose – re-elected to serve as National Chairperson for the coming yearWarren Middleton – re-elected as National Vice Chairperson/PIE Magazine EditorTom O’Carroll – elected as PIE General Secretary/responsible for the formation of local groups/PIE members’ contact service/Publicity [See further: Did NCCL’s trawl of List 99 radicalise PIE’s Tom O’Carroll? Palaver #6 October 1976]David C Grove – elected as Director of PIE’s forthcoming children’s rights campaign/responsible for distribution of mailCharles Napier – elected as Treasurer/responsible for recruitment of new members.Peter Righton – elected as Organiser of prison-hospital visits/general correspondence and PIE befriending.
Want applicants for Legal adviser and Director of Research. [Ian Pace blog]

DLAS wanted an article from PIE on the ways in which their freedom of speech have been muzzled for the DLAS publication “Uncensored” Tom O’Carroll nominates Keith Hose to write this for Grey.

Seemingly, a fear precipitated by Grey’s own invitation, adopting the role of a self-fulfilling prophet of doom while bearing in mind Grey’s ego couldn’t bear not to archive these writings publicly.

The Defence of Literature and the Arts Society (1968 – 1983)

The Defence of Literature and Arts Society attracted sponsors from “the great and good”:

Lords, charity directors, MPs, former MPs, lawyers and even doctors such as Dr David Stafford-Clark and Lords who were also Doctors such as Lord Winstanley (apparently a staunch supporter of everyone else’s freedom of speech bar Mary Whitehouse’s when he commanded Antony Grey to pursue her to the end of the road if not further! [Dec 1976: See further blog post here]

Francis Bennion, Parliamentary Counsel and Civil Liberties Barrister

One member of the Executive Committee who served alongside Antony Grey and Eric Thompson was Francis Bennion, Barrister and Parliamentary counsel, who had drafted the constitutions of Pakistan and Ghana, the Consumer Credit Act, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, and the hugely successful reference book for lawyers on ‘Statutory Interpretation’. In 1968 he founded the Professional Association of Teachers.

In 1983 Antony Grey and his partner Eric Thompson were still serving on the Executive Committee of the DLAS along with Michael Rubinstein (the solicitor who Sir Harold Haywood was dismayed at charging for his advice on suing Mary Whitehouse due to his “special interest in the Trust”).

Lord Beaumont of Whitley (former Albany Trust Chairman 1969-1972?) is also a sponsor.

Ben Whitaker (former Lab: Hampstead MP 1966-1970)

Ben Whitaker was the Chairman of the DLAS and had been Labour MP for Hampstead 1966-1970 during Wilson’s first term, at the same time Dr David Kerr, a fellow DLAS sponsor, had been Labour MP for Wandsworth Central.

Ian Mikardo MP (Lab: East end, Bow, Poplar, Bethnal Green 1964-1987)

“… the progress of the Child Protection bill was threatened by MP Ian Mikardo, who blocked it to protest against tactics being used by the Conservative party to block Edward Fletcher‘s bill on employment protection, the Prime Minister, James Callaghan, stepped in to ensure that the Bill received the time required to become law.[1]” [Wikipedia: Child Protection Act 1978]

“After all the recent hysteria about the Child Protection Bill, when Mr Ian Mikardo was practically accused of supporting the vile trade in child pornography, we have at last been given a chance to examine the Bill as it ambles its way through its second reading in the House of Lords. To judge from press reaction, and from statements by various opportunist MPs, one might have supposed that child pornography was a new and hideous development which somehow escaped existing legislation on obscene publication and protection of minors, while threatening to corrupt a whole generation of British schoolchildren for the unscrupulous gain of these merchants in human misery . . .”

When PIE member Nettie Pollard invites Grey to join the NCCL Gay Rights Committee on 3rd April 1978 [see here – scroll to bottom of post] he was no stranger to the NCCL having served on the Executive Committee almost a decade previously, albeit listed with his real name – Edgar Wright. The General Secretary at the time was Tony Smythe (future Director of MIND), who 12 years later Grey would pressure into responding to Ronald Butt’s allegation in The Times [26th March 1981: Spotlightonabuse here ‘The Questions Unaswered in the Hayman case’]. Butt had stated MIND was a ‘pressure group in receipt of government money and support’ was being one of ‘most guilty of conniving at the attempt to make the pedophile ‘movement’ respectable.’

[See also: MIND Workshop September 1975 on paedophilia, chaired by Peter Righton, attended by Antony Grey and Sir Harold Haywood, with speeches by two PIE members who concurrently served on the NCCL Gay Rights Committee, Chairman Keith Hose and Nettie Pollard)

During the passage of the Sexual Offences Bill through Parliament in 1967, Grey, as dual Secretary of the Sexual Law Reform Society and the Albany Trust, also sat on the Legal Group of the NCCL Executive Committee. Although he’d studied history at Magdelene College Oxford, Grey had also read for the Bar and had therefore undertaken legal training. Grey was very busy post royal assent for the Act, bitterly disappointed with its limited decriminalisation – not only was he sitting on NCCL’s Executive Committee he had also established a Project Study Group with Peter Righton involving Ian Greer [see further blog post here], was assisting with the editing of notorious child abuser Walter Breen’s UK publication of Greek Love and also planning to co-write a book with Dr David Kerr MP (Lab: Wandsworth Central 1964-1970) [see further blog post here]

On the Legal Board of the NCCL Grey got the opportunity to lobby with and learn from some of the leading lights of the civil liberties legal world, then and now, including:

“He recalls his first meeting with Ian Brady, who was introduced as a client through long-time friend Lord Longford. “Brady was in a terrible state in prison – he looked like a skeleton coming out of a Nazi concentration camp.” Using an internal Home Office psychiatrist’s report, which recommended that Brady be moved to a mental hospital, Mr Birnberg started an action against the Home Office in the early 1980s and succeeded in having Brady moved to Park Lane (now Ashworth), where he has been since 1985.”

Dr Lindsey Neustatter – Albany Trust’s Deputy Chairman in 1962 – and member of the interviewing panel appointing Antony Grey to the Trust [see blog post here on Grey’s interview] had provided the initial psychiatric report on Brady in 1966 prior to his sentencing.

On retirement in 1999:

“He will also spend more time campaigning, with “maverick” MP Austin Mitchell, for a National Legal Service. He has already made submissions to the Lord Chancellor. “Needless to say, I’m a very old acquaintance of the Lord Chancellor, I think I gave him one of his first legal aid briefs – possibly the only one he has ever had.”

Lord Irvine, Tony Blair’s former Head of Chambers was the Lord Chancellor at the time Birnberg is mentioning having instructed him on a legal aid case, perhaps one of the very few. Bizarrely Austin Mitchell MP’s name is only familiar to me due to attracting headlines a few weeks ago for declaring Labour will still win Grimsby even if the party selected a ‘raving alcoholic sex pedophile’ [Independent, 25 February 2015]

‘In his 69th year, the solicitor and his firm will have a lasting influence. His career has spanned almost two thirds of his life, during which time there have been the most radical of changes in the law, and in lawyers. The articled clerks who have been at the firm include Paul Boateng, Gareth Peirce, and Imran Khan, who acts for Stephen Lawrence’s family. Director of Liberty, John Wadham, who also worked at the firm , says: “Ben Birnberg has been an inspiration, not only to me, but to a whole generation of civil rights lawyers.”‘

A leading public law scholar at the London School of Economics, I have fond memories of immersing myself in his controversial book Politics of the Judiciary (1977) when I should have been completing an undergrad essay on the separation of powers in Constitutional & Admin law.

“In common with his friend Ralph Miliband, Griffith had absorbed much of Laski’s socialist radicalism, and his more explicitly political analyses tended to highlight the authoritarian nature of government and in particular the close political, social and class linkages of the elites in power. It was therefore hardly surprising that he advanced a radical critique of the role of the judiciary, especially when it strayed into the field of politics.” [from Guardian obituary above]

“…provided the legal expertise to the National Council for Civil Liberties (now Liberty) during its crucial period of growth in the 1960s. A right-hand man to director general Martin Ennals, he was also a founder, trustee and administrator for the Cobden Trust, the NCCL’s sister charity.

In 1970, Paterson wrote one of Cobden’s early publications, Legal Aid as a Social Service. Its conclusions could be taken to heart today by a government which no longer views the law as a social service.”

Alan Paterson’s daughter Tess Gill became NCCL Vice Chairman in 1976, the year the battle with PIE putting forward motions at the NCCL’s AGM had raged most ferociously and Jack Dromey MP had been co-opted back onto the Executive Committee

“On their retirement, they moved to Calne, Wiltshire, opening their home as a haven for their family and for their daughter Tess and her colleagues on the NCCL women’s committee to plan their next campaigns.”

Cedric Thornberry (b.1936- d.2014) [Guardian Obituary] Also a lecturer at London School of Economics who would later become Assistant General Secretary to UN and advisor to NATO. It was during 1967/8 he left his first wife and children (his daughter, until recently Labour’s Shadow Attorney-General, Emily Thornberry MP Lab: Islington South since 2005, and her two younger brothers)

“Her mother Sallie, alas no longer with us, was a most courageous and distinguished person, and also much-loved by political allies and opponents alike. She was a teacher by profession, and an active and popular Labour councillor who became, despite the privations and difficulties of her life, Mayor of Guildford in Surrey, by no means a Labour town.

But the family was not fatherless in the sense that it had never had a father. Nor was Sallie Thornberry unmarried. On the contrary, she was married to a distinguished and talented academic lawyer, Cedric Thornberry, who lectured at the London School of Economics, and rose to become Assistant General Secretary of the United Nations. He is still active in the international human rights industry.

I do not know or seek to know exactly how he came to leave the family home, though he did so when his daughter was seven and his sons even younger. It is perhaps significant that Emily Thornberry omits all reference to him from her entry in ‘Who’s Who’ (those in Who’s Who’ write their own entries), though she does mention her mother.” [The phoney outrage of Emily Thornberry, Christopher Hitchens, Daily Mail, 18 June 2012]

In 1968 Michael Schofield, a fellow Albany Trustee, would join Grey on the NCCL Executive Committee further strengthening the links between the two organisations. Grey and Doreen Cordell’s animosity towards one another would fester throughout 1969 until Grey’s resignation and replacement with Michael De La Noy as Director of the Trust in December 1970.

Antony Grey had met Eric J. Thompson, who became his life partner in 1960 when they were both living in Belsize Park, North London. By the early 1970s Eric, specialising in population planning, had become Chairman of the Census Research Group and Assistant Director of the Greater London Council (‘GLC’) Intelligence Unit and the pair had moved to Uplands Road in Hornsey/Crouch End, N8. Antony and Eric also sat on the Executive Committee of the Defence of Literature & Arts Society (‘DLAS’) together with familiar names such as Lord Winstanley. Since renamed the Campaign Against Censorship (‘CAC’) the group was originally formed in 1968 to campaign against laws on censorship.

Guardian 7 September 1974

In 1968 Eric also joined Grey at the National Council of Civil Liberties, not on the Executive Committee but on the Standing Orders Committee (‘SOC’) which met four times a year to consider motions to put forward to the Executive Committee for the AGM each year.

Report of the Standing Committee NCCL 1967/68

In 1972 Tony Smythe had resigned as General Secretary of NCCl to become field director of the American Civil Liberties Union and Martin Loney was appointed on 28 January 1973. Born in Bradford, Leeds, Loney had graduated from Durham University in Sociology and was working as Research Director for the World University Service in Geneva.

Loney, then aged 28, had barely been in position for a fortnight, appointed as General Secretary of NCCL in May 1973 when Thompson wrote to him regarding affiliation with individual branches of the National Association of Local Government Officers (‘NALGO’) which Thompson as a GLC employee was a member of.

In the NCCL Annual Report 1973/1974 the Council believed that Northern Ireland was being used as

“a testing ground for military control of civil disorder”

with serious implications for Britain beyond the immediate concerns of ‘the troubles’ in that the ‘experiments’ may cross the Irish Sea.

In September Patricia Hewitt joined NCCL has the first Women’s Rights Officer. [Liberty Begins at home, Guardian 12 December 1974]

Guardian 17 April 1974

Lennon said: Yard forced me into crime, 17 April 1974 The Guardian

Lennon had been on trial for the Winson Green plot in Birmingham Crown Court on Monday 8 April, acquitted while his co-defendant was jailed for 3 years. Court testimony that Lennon had been “frank and honest with the police when they asked him questions” alerted the IRA to the fact that Lennon had been a Special Branch informer.

Lennon said: Yard forced me into crime, 17 April 1974 The Guardian

On Tuesday 9 April he ended up on Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho and over a brandy told George Melly his rambling story of being blackmailed by Special Branch into informing on the IRA following being approached in Luton, Bedfordshire on the hospital steps where his wife was being treated for brain tumours. Born in Ulster, Lennon and his family came from a staunchly Republican border town Co. Down. Melly suggested Lennon tell the NCCL his story and so the very next day, Wednesday 9 April, Martin Loney and NCCL legal officer Larry Grant found themselves taking a 17 page statement from Lennon as he recounted the events of Special Branch’s blackmail on him to enter into various illegal escapades while informing on the IRA.

By Thursday 10 April Lennon had been shot in the back of the head and was found face down in a ditch in Chipstead, Surrey.

On 16 April, 3 hours before NCCL called a press conference to demand a full-scale Parliamentary Inquiry into the activities of Special Branch in the days before Lennon’s murder a call was received at their offices threatening to kill 2 members of NCCL staff before the end of the week. Loney pressed on regardless with the press conference.

Two clues may hold keys to Lennon’s last hours, 20 April 1974 Guardian

On Thursday 7 June, Loney was sacked by the Executive Committee of NCCL chaired by Henry Hodge. Only 5 of the Executive Committee were shocked at the sudden turn of events.

Dr Jock Young, a lecturer in Criminology at Middlesex Polytechnic, resigned immediately sending a letter to the EC stating

“In all my years of political activity, I have never seen such a vicious hatchet job as that carried out on the NCCL General Secretary last night. If that is your committee’s idea of civil liberties, I’m glad to be out of it” [NCCL Split over sacking, Guardian, June 8 1974]

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

Mr Morris Pollack didn’t resign but started to gather the 50 signatures needed to call an Emergency General Meeting to condemn the EC’s action led by Hodge and ask for Loney’s reinstatement. Those employed by the NCCL as staff (as opposed to the Executive Committee) were also very unhappy about the way in which the decision had been reached and executed.

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

Tony Smythe, Director of MIND, had left the sacking meeting before the vote took place saying “I moved a motion to get everyone to withdraw their resolutions. It seemed to me that a bit of reconciliation was necessary. A number of very trivial arguments were put forward as reasons for the dismissal.”

After the meeting Loney said the E.C led by Hodge had “behaved with the sophistication of a drunk on a bulldozer.” He said his dismissal had been pre-arranged and that Hodge, as Chairman, had only called the meeting because Loney had refused to be pressured into resigning privately. “I would not do the gentlemanly thing and resign. I thought the NCCL members should have a chance to know what was going on.”

Guardian 8 June 1974 NCCL split over sacking

19 June 1974: The ‘Emergency General Meeting’ & the Grey/Thompson machinations

By Wednesday 19 June over 50 NCCL members had requested a ‘Special General Meeting’ to ask why Loney had been sacked. 181 individual members attended the meeting and 139 voting cards were issued to affiliated organisations. The meeting opened at 10.30am with Henry Hodge in his role as Chairman of the E.C. of the NCCL. Eric Thompson and Antony Grey attended, quietly seething at Hodge’s ineptness at losing control of Loney.

By 11.45 am the following motion had been tabled to be carried – the rest of the day was spent with various factions trying to amend or dilute the condemnation of the NCCL Executive Committee’s actions by its members in order to prevent Hodge and the 11 other Executive Committee members who had ejected Loney from being deposed with a vote of no confidence.

“Motion by various members requesting the Special General Meeting:

“At a time of increasing attacks on the fundamentals of liberty this Emergency General Meeting reaffirms the need for a militant civil liberties organisation. This meeting deplores the irresponsible behaviour of those members of the Executive Committee responsible for the sacking of the General Secretary. In view of:

a) the adverse consequence this had in the Council’s political credibility and financial solvency;

b) the divisive effect this has had on the Council;

c) the absence of any reasoned explanation for this action;

this meeting declares its lack of confidence in those Executive Committee members responsible. This meeting recognises that the National Council of Civil Liberties faces a difficult financial situation and commits itself to fight to preserve and extend the NCCL so that it can continue to play a key role in the defence of civil liberties.”

Attachment from Eric Thompson to Mr Crampton 25/10/1974 reporting on the SGM to NALGO Branch Meeting

In Eric Thompson’s report to Mr Crampton, dated 25 October 1974 it becomes apparent how the Emergency General Meeting was manipulated. In the confusion of a group walking out and then returning Eric Thompson took the opportunity to move his amending motion to the above, seconded by Antony Grey (as Edgar Wright) which was carried:

Delete all after ‘deplores’ on line 3 and substitute:

This meeting deplores:

“the increasing weakness of the Council over the last two years and calls on the EC to take tighter control over the office and to give priority to building up a strong parliamentary civil liberties group and an active national civil liberties campaign.”

Having averted Hodge and the EC’s deposal Antony and Eric wrote a scathing joint letter to Hodge to make it clear they had ‘rescued’ the NCCL Executive Committee.

Together they reminded Hodge “the giving of priority to building up a strong and active Civil Liberties Group of MPs” should be acted on before the next AGM in April 1975 and that they had asked him and the EC to take “tighter control over the office”.

“We trust that you will be able to give the next AGM a positive report on all the above points, and that from now on there will be no divisiveness in making the NCCL into the strong and successful force which it must be if everyone’s civil liberties are to be safeguarded.”

As was to become the focus of the NCCL Gay Rights’ Committee in 1975, everyone’s civil liberties would include those of pedophiles as a priority.

In November 1974 the Starrit Report was published clearing Special Branch of any wrong-doing in relation to Lennon’s murder, the Paedophile Information Exchange was established, and Patricia Hewitt was confirmed as General Secretary of the NCCL (having been Acting GS since Loney’s undignified ejection). [Liberty Begins at home, Guardian 12 December 1974]